editorial

When Adorno and Horkheimer wrote their famous Dialectics of Enlightenment in 1944, they also coined the concept of the “cultural industry”. In a chapter titled “The Cultural Industry. Enlightenment as Mass Deception” they laid the ground for their fundamental critique of culture as a component of a new form of totalitarian oppression. Around 1968 the concept was again brought to the fore to criticize the repressive functions especially of mass media, but in the course of the following decades it was gradually voided of its critical content. During this period it became adopted as just another principle of neoliberal cultural politics. The concept from the Frankfurt School was completely transformed and (mis-)used as a key concept of Blairist cultural politics, making its way back to the continent in the late 1990s. With the help of blockbusters like Richard Florida’s “Creative Class” it became a feature of urban and economic development plans in many European cities, and finally made its way into the agenda of European Union cultural politics.

A Critique of Creative Industries assembles different national and urban case studies, and proposes a general critique of creative industries. The subject matter of these texts is closely linked with the transversal issue creativity hypes (http://eipcp.net/transversal/0207), which theorizes how the paradigm of creativity contributes to constituting cognitive capitalism.

A Critique of Creative Industries is based on the conference of the same title, which took place in Helsinki from 31 August to 2 September 2006, organized by eipcp in cooperation with FRAME – Finnish Fund for Art Exchange (http://www.frame-fund.fi). The texts have also been published in English in the magazine framework (Issue 6/Jan 2007, http://www.framework.fi); German versions of several texts will be published in March 2007 in the book Kritik der Kreativität (Ed. Gerald Raunig and Ulf Wuggenig, republicart Vol. 6, Vienna: Turia+Kant 2007, http://eipcp.net/publications/1171460471).

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articles:

Maurizio Lazzarato
* La construction du marché du travail culturel
* Construction of Cultural Labour Market
Matteo Pasquinelli
* Immaterial Civil War
Tere Vadén
* Digital Opportunities, Real Impossibilities
Branka Ćurčić
* Desire to Own
Maria Lind
* The Future is Here
Monika Mokre
* GovernCreativity, or: Creative Industries Austrian Style
* Gouvernekreativität, oder: Die Creative Industries in Österreich
Raimund Minichbauer
* Chanting the Creative Mantra
Marko Karo / Marita Muukkonen
* Titorelli’s Cage: Confined Spaces at Work
Ulf Wuggenig
* The Dealer as a Genius
* „Kreativität und Innovation“ im 19. Jahrhundert

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